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Archbishop Paglia: Bergoglian Prelate Par Excellence

by Christopher A. Ferrara
March 6, 2017

Remember this fellow?

It’s Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, whom Pope Bergoglio appointed head of the Pontifical Academy for Life at the same time he ordered the Academy’s demolition to make way for a new “integral human development” think-tank under the same name which will no longer have a pro-life mission as such — a development I discuss here.

I had always thought the above photo was quite revealing of the man, rainbow-colored sunglasses included. But more than that, the image of a grinning, mocha-latte-sipping, sunglass-bedecked prelate seems to me a kind of icon for the entire state of the Church under this pontificate. I mean the Bergoglian regime of “who am I to judge?” that never ceases to judge observant Catholics and other politically safe targets of opprobrium while “welcoming” and “accompanying” all manner of people who find the Sixth Commandment unduly burdensome but wish to partake of Holy Communion as they “discern” whether they might obey it someday, once they have sorted out their “complex circumstances.”

Apparently, however, I underestimated how revealing the photo is. As LifeSiteNews has just reported, Paglia commissioned a huge blasphemous and obscene painting for the interior of the cathedral in his former Diocese of Terni-Narni-Ameila. This monstrosity, painted by an openly homosexual Argentinian, Ricardo Cinalli, depicts Christ lifting up toward Heaven a pair of nets filled with nude and semi-nude figures whose postures are intended to demonstrate that in the nets “everything is permitted” according to the Bergoglian notion of “mercy” — everything including acts related to the homosexual “orientation” of Cinalli himself.

Odd, is it not, how this grotesquerie glorifies violation of the Sixth Commandment at the same time an attempt is underway to institutionalize sexual license in the Church under the guise of “discernment” and “accompaniment.” And from the Fatima perspective it is telling indeed that, as Our Lady warned the Fatima seers, more souls are lost on account of sins against the Sixth Commandment than any other.

LifeSite notes that Paglia not only personally selected Cinalli from a list of ten internationally known candidates, but also minutely supervised his work — even to the point of having himself painted into the disgusting depiction as a semi-nude figure “clutching a bearded man.” Also represented is the late Father Fabio Leonardis, who died in his fifties. Leonardis was head of the ludicrously misnamed diocesan Office of Cultural Heritage. “Fr. Fabio,” as Cinalli calls him, is shown in the nude “with a tattoo of a cupid’s arrow running through a heart containing the word ‘love’…”

As LifeSite recounts, many in the diocese “were so outraged by the work that Cinalli believed it might be destroyed after Fr. Fabio’s death. However, Bishop Paglia resisted such pressures until he left the diocese in 2012, and his successor has also left the mural in place.”

Since the election of Francis, Paglia has increasingly revealed the mentality suggested by the photo and the mural in which he had himself obscenely memorialized. As LifeSite summarizes:

• In 2013 Paglia opined that “the Catholic Church favors ‘legal protections and inheritance for people living together but are not married’ and opposes making homosexuality a crime.”

• In early 2015, “under the direction of Archbishop Paglia, the Pontifical Council for the Family hosted a series of lectures that raised the possibility of giving Holy Communion to people living in adulterous remarriages, after some period of public penance.”

• In July of 2016, “still under the direction of Paglia, the Pontifical Council for the Family issued a new sex-ed program that includes lascivious and pornographic images so disturbing that one psychologist suggested that the archbishop be evaluated by a review board in accordance with norms of the Dallas Charter, which are meant to protect children from sexual abuse.”

• In August of 2016, Pope Bergoglio “moved Paglia from the Pontifical Council for the Family to the presidency of the Pontifical Academy for Life… Soon it became apparent that the Academy was being radically transformed when new statutes were issued that no longer required members to sign a declaration of fidelity to the Catholic Church’s perennial teachings on the right to life… [and] all Academy memberships [were] terminated, leaving only Paglia and his staff at the top of an otherwise empty organization.”

• On the same day, as I discuss here, Paglia “gave a speech praising the recently-deceased founder of Italy’s Radical Party, Marco Pannella, a promiscuous bisexual whose career was largely spent attacking the values of the Catholic faith,” and who “had fought vigorously for the legalization of abortion, homosexual ‘marriage,’ transgender ‘rights,’ divorce, and free unions…” Yet Paglia called Pannella a “man of great spirituality” and pronounced his death “a great loss, not only for the people of the Radical Party, but also for our country.”

This is the man Pope Bergoglio has elevated to a position of great prominence in the Vatican apparatus. But it should be clear at this point in Bergoglio’s reign that Paglia is a Bergoglian prelate par excellence. He is emblematic of the reality that Phil Lawler — reflecting rising alarm among faithful Catholics — has honestly acknowledged: “the current Pope’s leadership has become a danger to the faith.”

From the Fatima perspective, this situation is horrifying but not surprising, for Our Lady came to earth to warn us about it a hundred years ago. That warning is known as the Third Secret of Fatima.